[MSF-Discuss] "Geospatial Foundation" Meeting

Paul RamseyFri Jan 13 12:32:10 EST 2006

Dear Community Members,
In order to help move along the process of starting an "open source
geospatial foundation" there will be a face-to-face meeting in
Chicago, Westin O'Hare, on February 4, 2006, hosted by Autodesk. In
conceiving of this meeting, we have tried (and will continue to try)
to follow these principles:
- Inclusion. Members from a number of different open source projects
have been invited (see the list so far below) and Autodesk has
offered to pay the travel costs of some of these invitees in order to
ensure they can attend if they cannot afford it otherwise. Anyone
else is also welcome to attend physically or virtually (see below).
- Transparency. The agenda for the meeting will be public, and will
be revised based on comments and input prior to the meeting. The
minutes of the meeting will also be public. Planning materials
(backgrounders, attendee lists, agenda) for the meeting on will be on
a public site. The whole meeting will be transcribed into IRC in real
time, and IRC users will be able to participate via an interlocutor
at the meeting.
The following are some general goals for the meeting (subject to
revision/addition/subtraction), which should provide enough certainty
that present investments into the starting of the foundation are not
wasted on concepts that people are not interested in for the long
term future.
- Agreement in principle on a mission statement or short charter.
- Agreement in principle on a governance model for the foundation.
Deciding whether the foundation should "look like" Eclipse, or
Apache, or The Open Group, or some other model entirely.
- Agreement in principle on a founding Board of Directors. A founding
BoD can start to make concrete decisions on things like a name, logo
and branding, domains, and so on.
- Agreement in principle on an acceptable short list of foundation
names, to be subjected to further legal research.
In general, the goal is to establish enough solid agreement on basic
issues that a founding BoD can proceed confidently in managing the
details in getting the foundation up and running.
The proposed agenda follows:
a. Opening statements and introductions
b. Q/A – ~20 min - from IRC, email
c. Foundation Goals – what should they be? What should the name be?
d. Q/A – ~20 min - from IRC, email
e. Foundation Operations – the givens (governance, legal
protection, IPR, licenses, funding, community management)
f. Q/A – ~20 min - from IRC, email
g. Foundation charter, tentative board membership, and action
plan established
h. Q/A – 20 min - from IRC, email
i. Breakout groups: Governance, Legal Issues, Community
Management, Funding
j. Breakout groups regroup and present their findings
k. Results will be gathered and enumerated for the creation of a
draft document rolling up the decisions and next steps.
The minutes of this meeting will be published on the web site within
a few days after the meeting adjourns. We will then work hard to
publish the final results of the meeting within two weeks of the
meeting.
An attorney who has worked with the creators of Mozilla and other
foundations to establish non profits for housing an open source
foundation will be present. Establishing an open source foundation is
now almost formulaic in Silicon Valley, and we would like to take
advantage of those formulas.
The participants in the meeting thus far are:
Brian Behlendorf (O'Reilly & CollabNet)
Chris Holmes (GeoServer/Open Planning Project)
Claude Philipona (FOSS4GIS Conference/Camptocamp)
Dave McIlhagga (Mapserver/DM)
Frank Warmerdam (OGR/GDAL)
Gary Lang (Tux/Autodesk)
Gary Sherman (QGIS)
Gordon Luckett (User/Autodesk)
Howard Butler (MapServer/UIowa)
Mark Lucas (OSSIM)
Paul Ramsey (PostGIS/uDig/Refractions)
Pericles Nacionales (Mapserver/UMN)
Robert Bray (Tux/Autodesk)
Rich Steele (Tux/Autodesk)
Paul Spencer (Ka-Map/DM)
Steve Lime (Mapserver)
Tom Burk (Mapserver/UMN)
Tyler Mitchell (O’Reilly Author, long-time MapServer Foundation
advocate)
We therefore have room for more on-site attendees. If you are
interested in attending to represent one of these communities as a
user or you want to propose adding a project to this list, please
send an email to:
chicago <at> mapserverfoundation.org
When we reach 25 on-site attendees, we will be at our budget limit
for this meeting and have reached a size that we feel comfortable
managing. Everyone else can participate through the virtual
mechanisms described above.
Everyone wants to ensure the foundation has a long and successful
future, and we know that this requires getting lots of input up
front, so the organization starts out heading in the right direction.
We hope that many of you can join us in Chicago, and that the rest
will join us virtually as well to take part in this process.
We will soon start posting Chicago location information (a hotel near
the airport is the goal) and information for discussion publicly. We
will use www.mapserverfoundation.org as the hosting place for virtual
connection information, discussion documents, agenda modifications,
and other documents associated with the foundation until such time as
the name of the foundation is chosen and a site dedicated to it has
been established.
Paul Ramsey
Gary Lang